A. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention, set forth herein, relate to a cap for a container, and more particularly, the embodiments of the present invention relate to a smart cap for a container used to dispense a medication and for automatically (a) verifying the taking of a medication by a patient and communication thereof to a pharmacy or other relevant entity, via an internet or other communication link or directly to the patient or caretaker to verify when and if a medication has been taken, (b) self-verifying the medication once the smart cap has been programmed for the medication so as to prevent improper dispensing thereof, (c) indicating and verifying the number of pills in the container, as well as the number remaining and the need for pharmacy restocking (d) indicating and verifying timing medication as prescribed (e) communicating relevant instructions and/or cautions in a language that the patient understands, as well as (f) providing other and different features and advantages flowing and/or derivable from these.
B. Description of Prior Art
Patients, especially the elderly, are prone to forget at times to take a medication or may not recall if they actually took it. This problem is aggravated with each additional medication that they are required to take See Improving Prescription Drug Container Labeling in the United States, A Health Literacy and Medication Safety Initiative, A White Paper Commissioned by the American College of Physicians Foundation.
Patients often fail to realize that they are out of a medication and must go without that medication until they can get a refill.
Patients are often non-compliant and fail to take medications of a prescribed basis.
Many patients from other countries are unable to understand English dosing instructions and/or cautions.
Errors can and do occur when physicians manuscript and/or when pharmacists read a prescription or dispense a medication to consumers. These risks have been increased by:
Increasing volume of prescriptions filled causing increased stress on physicians and on pharmacy staffs.
Pharmacies are often unable to determine actual medication usage and on many occasions have shortages of medications with unavailability to patients who need such medications.
Increasing use of poorly trained, overworked and/or mentally challenged pharmacy technicians.
Increasing additions of FDA-approved medications, many of which look alike or sound alike.
These mix-ups, have been documented and can cause great harm and even death to consumers.
More and more, consumers are becoming confused and even anxious that the medications they are taking are the ones prescribed by their physicians, because virtually every refill seems to contain a new and unfamiliar-looking generic form of a medication. This confusion is due to the fact that insurance plans frequently change their approved formulary—generic brands that they will pay for—usually approving a least expensive manufacturer at that particular time. In addition, more and more patients are seeing more than one physician (often as a result of patient insurance affiliation with doctors changing or the patients seeing different doctors for different illnesses). As a result, patients are now taking more and varied types of medications, quite often with one physician not knowing or being told (whether intentionally or unintentionally) of medications prescribed by another physician. Patients are thus seriously exposed to overmedication with duplicate prescriptions (particularly with different names of the same or similar medications) and increased risk of adverse drug interactions.
Even at the wholesale level, or in hospitals or in nursing homes, it is possible that a wrong medication is packaged in a large wholesale bottle or other container having a different label. It would be virtually impossible for the pharmacist to determine this mix-up. Additionally, on the retail and even consumer level, intentional and unintentional switching of medications among containers by the consumer or others can occur without current knowledge of the consumer.
Numerous innovations for medication verifying systems have been provided in the prior art which have been outlined in the parent of this application.
Numerous innovations for medication verifying systems have been provided in the prior art, some of which are being used. Furthermore, even though these innovations may be suitable for the specific individual purposes which they address, nevertheless, they would not be suitable for the purposes of the embodiments of the present invention as heretofore and hereafter described, namely, a smart cap for a container to dispense a medication and for automatically (a) self-verifying at least two (2) sides of the medication once the smart cap has been programmed for visually identifying the medication so as to prevent improper dispensing thereof, (b) indicating and verifying the number of pills in the container, (c) indicating and verifying timely, (for example daily/weekly/monthly) compliance for taking of the medication as prescribed, (d) communicating instructions and/or cautions to patients in a language(s) or vernacular(s) understandable to the patients, (e) verifying some or all of the foregoing by means of bar codes or other identifiers and/or communicating patient usage (or evidencing non-usage and non compliance) of a medication and ensuring a constantly available supply.